Some strange, animalistic noise is torn from my throat, a sort of growling whimper I didn’t even know I was capable of making. I stumble forward a few steps, but my legs are shaking so much that I end up on my knees and have to crawl the last two or three feet. “Garen?” I try to whisper, but no sound comes out. I try again, and now, almost too loudly, “Garen! Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I lunge for his nightstand and pick up his phone, a Blackberry I don’t remember him buying. The keys are tiny, and my vision keeps fading in and out of focus too much for me to actually identify the “nine” and “one.” It takes several tries, but I eventually connect.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?” answers a fast-talking female voice on the other end of the line.

“I-I need to report an assault. My stepbrother’s been beaten up by his boyfriend, I’m not even sure he’s still alive. We’re at our house, one fifteen Maple Street, in Lakewood. Please, I need an ambulance, the police, everybody,” I say, my words tumbling over themselves and falling, pathetic and desperate, into the phone.

“Emergency response units are being dispatched immediately. What is your name?”

Like now’s really the time for introductions? I exhale sharply. “My name’s Travis McCall, my stepbrother’s name is Garen.”

“Travis, can you tell if your stepbrother is breathing or not?”

“I don’t think, I mean, he doesn’t seem like he is,” I babble. Before the dispatcher can reply, I duck down to listen, hoping for something, anything that will convince me he isn’t already gone.

And then I hear it, the soft, scratchy shudder of air making its way down his torn-up, blood-filled throat. I let out a noise that’s somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “No, no, he’s breathing. He’s alive. But barely, I mean, I don’t think he can last much longer, please—”

“Help is on the way, Travis, he’s going to be taken to the hospital soon. Can you tell if he’s conscious?”

“No, he’s definitely not. He’s not moving, there’s nothing,” I whisper. The dispatcher continues to ask me questions, little tidbits of information about how Garen’s doing, if he seems to be getting worse. The quizzing only stops when I hear the door being thrown open downstairs. I hammer on the “end call” button and stuff the phone in my pocket, bolting for the door and shouting, “Here! We’re upstairs, please come—”

The short train of paramedics hoist the gurney into the air, and I flatten myselfagainst the wall of the hallway so they can move past me into Garen’s bedroom. I inch back into the room after them, and they huddle over the body, checkinghis vitals and examining him, occasionally tossing questions over their shoulders at me. Does he have any allergies, when did this happen, how long has he been unconscious? My answer to each is the same, a resounding I don’t know. Garen gets strapped down onto the gurney and taken back downstairs, and I follow, hesitant and useless. I am almost at the door when a woman in a police officer’s uniform catches my arm.

“Travis McCall?” she confirms, and I nod. “I’m Officer DeStefano. I’m going to be one of the people handling this case. I’d like to bring you down to the precinct to ask you some questions, see if we can establish a timeline and some of the details of what happened tonight. Are you eighteen years old?”

Of course they want to question me. Of course I wouldn’t actually be allowed to go in the ambulance with Garen’s almost-corpse. I slump against the wall and shake my head. “No, I’m still seventeen.”

“Alright, we’re going to wait here until your parent or guardian returns, and then I’ll take you downtown.”

This is Lakewood; there is no downtown. I shrug. “I don’t mind going now. I mean, I give my consent or whatever? I could just call my mom now and have her meet us there. I-I think Bill – that’s my stepdad – would probably just go straight to the hospital.”

“Of course. I’ll wait here while you call them, then,” Officer DeStefano says. I trudge a few feet away and pull out Garen’s cell phone once more, dialing Bill’s number with trembling fingers. He picks up on the third ring.

“Garen!” he says pleasantly. “This is a surprise, you almost never call me when I’m—”

“This is Travis. Garen’s on his way to the hospital right now. I came home from the prom and found him… look, he’s been beaten up. Really badly. I called an ambulance the second I found him, but he’s not looking good,” I say. The silence on the other end is so deafening that I actually squeeze my eyes shut and knot my fingers in my hair.

“Who did this to him?” Bill finally asks, in a voice halfway between a gasp and a snarl.

“The guy he’s been seeing. Dave something, goes to Yale,” and after that, it all spills out of me. “They dated at Patton, when Garen was a sophomore. Garen told me he was hospitalized once or twice. Well, that was Dave. Same goes for his split lip, his black eye, everything.”

“Dave who? The boy he was with the night Evelyn and I returned from France?”

“Yeah.”

Another silence, then--

“What are you doing now? Are you going to the hospital, too?” Bill asks abruptly.

“No, I’m with a cop right now. She says they want me to come to the police station and answer some questions so they can establish a timeline or whatever. You’re with my mom, so can you just tell her that she needs to go to the police station so she can be there while they question me?”

“Tell the cop—” Bill pauses, and I’m suddenly uncomfortably aware that he sounds as close to tears as I’m beginning to feel, “—tell her that they had better find that little shit, they had better find this Dave—” he practically spits the word, “—and put him in a holding cell tonight, or he will be dead before morning. And if my son dies, even being locked up won’t save him.”

Stunned, I listen to the dial tone for a few moments before I can manage to make myself face Officer DeStefano. “My stepdad’s on the way to the hospital, and my mom’s going to meet us at the station. And… I think you should probably send someone out for the guy who did this. I don’t, I’m not sure how you’d find him. But I know his first name is David, he’s in his second year at Yale, and he used to go to Patton Military Academy, in New York. He drives a black convertible. A Lexus, I think. I don’t really know much else about him.”

Officer DeStefano frowns and asks, “How do you know it was him?”

“He’s Garen’s boyfriend. And he hits him, he always has. They’ve only been dating a few weeks, but they used to go out a few years ago. Dave broke some of his bones and stuff then, too,” I say. Officer DeStefano blinks at me, and I add softly, “He gave Garen a black eye a week ago. A split lip a week or two before that. Garen asked me not to say anything, so I covered for him. I thought it might get better.”

“This isn’t your fault, Travis,” Officer DeStefano says soothingly, placing a hand on my shoulder and steering me towards the door. “When we get to the station, you can tell the detective everything.”

Outside, she beckons to another cop who’s talking to one of the paramedics who arrived in what seems to be a second, unnecessary ambulance. The second cop introduces himself as Officer Lowitz and opens the door to their police cruiser, gesturing for me to get in. Just before the door closes, I hear Lowitz address a third cop, telling him, “Make sure they get pictures of everything. Upstairs, first bedroom on the left.”

The ride to the station is mostly silent. Occasionally, DeStefano or Lowitz will make a comment about something being said over their radio, but neither says anything to me. I sink down in my seat and pull Garen’s phone out of my pocket. It takes me a moment to figure out how to move around the main screen, but when I click on his text messages, the screen opens to a neatly organized series of text messages to and from James, listed in the contacts as Jamie Goldwyn. The conversation begins with a message from Garen, sent around the time I went upstairs to threaten Dave.

Wasn’t trying. Look, if seeing him with Big Ben is so painful, maybe you should stop TORTURING him and try to win him back. He’s got no reason to dump the midget if his other option is you being an asshole.

I’m not being an asshole, he is.

He’s not going to be nice to you if you’re not nice to him.

I don’t want him to be nice to me, I just want him to realize he’s still in love with me and run away with me and be with me forever.

Oh, well, as long as you’re not expecting too much.

He still wants me, Jamie, I can tell. I’m pretty sure he’s upstairs, yelling at my boyfriend and trying to defend my virtue or whatever right now.

Shut the front fucking door. Since when do you have a boyfriend?

Apparently, Garen never bothered to answer the last message, because the next two texts in the conversation are both ones that James sent. Tell me some details! and Garen? You there? I click back out of the James texts, and scroll through the rest of his messages. There’s an unread message from someone listed in the contacts as Dave Walczyk.

The police cruiser pulls into the parking lot of the station, and I shove Garen’s phone back into my pocket. Officer DeStefano comes around to let me out, and I follow her into the building.

The Lakewood Police Department is a small building, comprised of a cluttered reception area and one short hallway, which is lined with doors to offices, and leads to a large holding cell. After stopping at the desk to have a brief, quite conversation with the officer there, Officer DeStefano leads me down the hall, and for a moment, I’m afraid she’s going to put me in the holding cell. At last second, however, she turns to the right and pushes open a door. The room beyond is bare, except for a solid wooden table with six chairs around it, three each on two opposing sides.

I nod and sink into the middle chair on one side of the table. “Yeah, it’s fine. Call me anything you want.”

“Alright. We’re just going to wait here for a few moments, okay? Once your mom gets here, she’ll come back, and you can make an official statement about what happened tonight. Detective Phillips will be handling this case, and I just want to assure you that both she and I just want to help you and your stepbrother, alright?”

“Sure,” I say, shifting in my seat. “But… listen. Do you think Garen’s going to be okay?”

“The doctors over at Lakewood General are going to do their best work to patch him up,” Officer DeStefano replies, and I can’t help but snort.

It takes a few moments for her to reply, which really tells me all I need to know. “From what I heard at the scene, your stepbrother’s injuries are very severe. It’s going to take a lot of work to fix him up, but I promise you that he’s in good hands right now. The best thing you can do for him is try to help us figure out what happened tonight.”

The door to the room swings open, and my mom rushes in, trailed by a tall, dark-haired woman in a charcoal gray suit. Mom sits down next to me and wraps an arm around my shoulders. “Are you alright, Travis?”

“’m fine,” is all I can manage. The woman in the suit takes a seat next to Officer DeStefano.

“Travis, my name’s Detective Carolina Phillips. I’m going to be working on your stepbrother’s case, and I hope I can count on your assistance in determining what happened tonight. Now, I’d like to record this interview so that we can keep your statement on file. Afterwards, one of our clerks will transcribe it, and you’ll need to sign and date the written copy to affirm that everything has been recorded accurately. Is that alright with you?” When I nod, she takes a small silver tape recorder out of her pocket, switches it on, and sets it on the table between us, the microphone pointed towards me. She clears her throat and says, “This is Detective Carolina Phillips, with the Lakewood Police Department, in Lakewood, Connecticut. The time is-” she checks her watch, then the file on the table in front of her, “-nine twenty-four in the evening, on Friday, May fifth. I’m speaking with Travis McCall in reference to the physical assault of Garen Anderson. Travis, could you please spell your first and last name, for the record?”

I do, and she asks me to tell my birth date, address, and telephone number. This whole thing is starting to feel a lot like filling out a magazine subscription. She also asks me to clarify that my mom is present during my questioning, and that I have given my permission for this whole thing to be recorded.

“Since April sixteenth, of this year. My mom married his dad,” I say. God. If I keep my mouth shut, they’re just going to figure it out eventually, or my stupid mom is going to say something, so, quietly, I add, “Also, Garen and I used to date.”

Phillips blinks. “I’m sorry?”

“Garen and I used to date,” I say, louder. When she blinks at me again, I hasten to clarify, “Before our parents got married.”

“How long did you date?” Phillips asks. I have to admit, she’s surprisingly quick to recover from weird revelations.

“A few months. From November of last year, to January of this year,” I say.

That’s enough to raise her eyebrows once more. “That’s fairly recent. Were your parents dating at the time, as well?”

“Yes.”

“Were you and Garen living together?”

“Yes.”

“Were you sleeping together?”

My mom makes a little noise of disapproval. I feel a burning flush creeping up my cheeks. “Yeah. But, you know, we were both seventeen at that point, so it wasn’t like, illegal. Not here, anyway.”

“Our parents found out we were seeing each other, and Bill kicked Garen out.”

“Travis!” Mom says indignantly. To Phillips, she adds, “He didn’t mean forever. W-We just couldn’t put up with that under our roof, you see, so my husband asked his son to leave, but by the time things had cooled down, Garen had left town.”

“I’m pretty sure my stepdad knew where he was the whole time. See, up until October, Garen went to boarding school in New York, and that’s where he ran to once he got kicked out. He was staying with his friend James. And, I dunno, when I met James, he basically said that Bill had been in contact with them. So, I guess Garen’s dad knew where he was the whole time,” I say.

“I see. Now, when did Garen return to Lakewood?”

“The day our parents got married. April sixteenth,” I reply.

Phillips cocks her head to the side, just slightly. “Did you get back together?”

“Uh, no. I have a boyfriend now. A different boyfriend. We’ve been together since like, the end of February.”

“Did Garen know?”

“Kind of,” I say. When Phillips doesn’t reply, I sigh and say, “Garen and Ben – Ben McCutcheon, that’s my boyfriend – were friends before Garen took off. When James showed up the day before the wedding, he called Garen and told him I was with Ben. I guess that’s why Garen came back.”

Reliving all of these events makes me feel like some creepy, incestuous zoo animal. I half-expect Officer DeStefano to whip out a camera and start snapping pictures of me, things she can tack up on the wall and label “this kid screws his stepsibling.” Phillips asks me some more questions about my relationship with Garen, and my mom begins tapping her foot under the table. Finally, after ten more minutes, the conversation turns to tonight.

“Can you tell me what happened tonight, in your own words?”

I hunch down in my seat a little. “I got home around six, I guess. Tonight was my boyfriend’s prom, so I went upstairs and got ready. When I came back downstairs, Garen was in the kitchen. We talked for a little while, and then he said he was hanging out with Dave that night.”

“Dave…?”

“Dave uh, Walczyk, I think. W-A-L-C-Z-Y-K. He’s Garen’s boyfriend. They’ve been dating for like, two weeks now, but they went out for something like four months when Garen was a sophomore at Patton Military Academy. Dave was a senior then. He goes to Yale now.”

“Do you know how their relationship ended then?” Phillips ask.

I sit up a little straighter and square my shoulders. “Dave was abusing Garen.”

“Physically or verbally?”

“Both, I guess. But mostly physically. They were dating for about two months when Dave beat him up so badly he ended up in the hospital. They stayed together for a few months after that, but the abuse kept happening, so Garen broke up with him.”

“Now, you weren’t friends with Garen then, correct? This is all stuff that Garen has told you since you met in the fall?” Phillips asks.

White-hot anger flares inside me. “If you’re trying to say I’m making it up, or that Garen was, you should call his old school. There are probably hospital records that confirm it.”

“We’ll be sure to look into the incident. Now, if Dave had abused your stepbrother, why would Garen want to get back together with him?”

I shrug and slump down once more. “I think that was why Garen wanted to get back with him. Garen has a tendency to be sort of self-destructive.”

“Self-destructive,” Phillips repeats.

Shit. I have a sudden mental image of a court room, with everyone taking a turn on the stand, and a jury hearing my words played back to them. Garen has a tendency to be sort of self-destructive. They’ll give each other knowing looks, they’ll get into the deliberation room and say, Well, the kid wanted it to happen. He wanted to self-destruct, so it’s not really murder, it’s just S&M gone wrong. Not guilty, I say! Community service, at the most!

“What I meant was that he’s been really upset lately. He doesn’t like the fact that I’m dating Ben, so I… guess he started dating Dave to make me jealous. I think that mattered to him more than being in a stable relationship did,” I say slowly. There. That sounds good, right?

Phillips and Officer DeStefano exchange a significant look, but before I can ask about it, Phillips says, “Alright. So, Garen told you he was going to be spending time with Dave tonight. Was Dave at the house when you were there?”

“Yes. When I found out he was there, I went upstairs to talk to him. We… I hadn’t met him before, really. But I just told him not to mess with Garen again. He said Garen’s been pushing his buttons ever since they got back together. He admitted to shoving Garen while they were in a car together, so hard that Garen hit his face on the window and split his lip. And it’s not just that. A week ago, I came home and Garen had a black eye,” I say. Mom leans forward quickly.

“He told us he got into a fight.”

“He did, just not the kind you assumed it was,” I snap. “Look, I’m here to make a statement, so that’s what I’m doing. My statement is that I am absolutely positive that Dave Walczyk is the one who beat up Garen, because I am absolutely positive that he’s done it before. That’s it.”

“Not quite,” Phillips says, her voice slightly sharper than before. “I need you to tell me how you found Garen this evening.”

“I don’t know when I got home, but Dave’s car was gone. I went right upstairs and changed out of my suit, then I went to Garen’s room. The door was unlocked, so I just went in. And he, uh…”

He was lying there, looking like a smashed-up toy. There was blood everywhere, all over his sheets, his clothes, his bruised skin. I said his name, I said it over and over, and he still didn’t – or couldn’t – open his eyes.

“He what?” Phillips prompts, and I jump.

“Sorry. He um, his body was all… he’d been beaten up. Badly. He was bleeding a lot, and it looked like he had some broken bones, maybe. He was unconscious, but breathing. I called the ambulance. I guess that’s it.”

Even once my statement is finished, I am still stuck at the station for at least another half hour before I’m allowed to leave. Mom says nothing on the way outside, though her face is tense with worry. I slip into the front seat of her car, and pull out my phone, tapping out a quick text message to Ben. I know you’re still with Alex. Call me in the morning. I need you. His reply comes a few moments later. Alex’s sobering up by now, I just set him up in bed so he can sleep it off. I’m leaving now anyway. Want me to meet you? It takes me several minutes to convince myself to send the text message, but as we pull into the hospital parking lot, I finally type out, Meet me at Lakewood General Hospital. I think Garen might be about to die.

Once the message has sent, I power down my phone and shove it back into my pocket. I wordlessly follow Mom into the building, through a maze of hallways she seems all too sure of. She must’ve called the hospital or Bill on her way to the police station, found out where they were keeping Garen. Sure enough, at the end of her little trail, Bill and Bree are both in the waiting room. Bree is sitting in one of the rickety chairs, with her legs drawn up to her chest; Bill is pacing in front of the double-doors marked ‘intensive care unit’ in large red letters.

“Bill,” Mom says softly, “is he… how is everything—”

“We’re waiting,” Bill says flatly. “We’ve been here almost two hours, and they haven’t told us anything yet. They said that when he was brought in, he was alive, but barely. They don’t… he might not make it. That’s all they seemed able to tell us. He appears to have a lot of internal injuries, and he might not make it through the night.”

My sister’s shoulders begin to twitch, and I perch on the arm of her chair so that I can sling an arm around her. There are tears streaming down her cheeks, but I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry.

“Have you called Marian?” Mom asks.

Bill nods. “She’s driving in from the City now. She’ll be here as soon as she can. I promisedI’d call her if anything—”

The ICU doors swing open, and Bill freeze mid-step, his eyes latched onto the man approaching us. “Bill Anderson?” A brief nod. “I’m Dr. Matthew Clarke, I’ve just finished working on your son. The good news is that Garen is alive, and we’ve been able to stablize him fairly well.”

I can’t help but slip right off the arm of Bree’s chair, down onto the floor, and bury my face in my hands. So much for not crying.

“His injuries, however, are numerous and severe. He is currently unconscious, and he may have a concussion. We’re going to run some tests, some scans, but we should know more soon. I have every reason to believe he will make a full mental recovery, but when he first wakes up, he may experience some short term memory loss, frequent headaches, that sort of thing. There was also some minor internal bleeding, but fortunately, we’ve been able to stop it. One of the things that I believe will cause you the most concern is his bones.”

“What happened to his bones?” Bree interrupts fretfully.

“Two of his ribs have been fractured, the tibia in his right leg is broken, and the index, middle, and ring fingers on his right hand are all broken. I don’t believe his nose is broken, but because of the swelling and bruising all over his face right now, it’s difficult to tell,” Dr. Clarke says.

“Will he make a complete recovery?” Mom asks.

Dr. Clarke nods. “I believe so, yes. All of the breaks are clean, and Garen seems to be in extremely good health, which leads me to believe that he’ll heal quite well. However, there may be some lasting effects. There are a few cuts that seem particularly deep, so he may end up having some facial scarring, particularly on his left side.”

It doesn’t matter. I won’t care if he comes out of this whole mess looking like fucking Frankenstein’s monster. At least he’ll be alive. I make my way carefully to my feet. “Can we see him?”

“I think it would be more than alright for your parents to see him, but I would caution very strongly against you or your sister going in anytime soon. It can be very upsetting to see someone you love in this condition,” Clarke says, but I am already following Bill towards the double doors. He doesn’t make any move to stop me; he may not even realize I’m standing behind him.

Garen’s room is the first door on the left, just like it is back at the house. Bill pushes open the door and strides across the room. A chair has been positioned carefully at the side of the bed, and my stepfather sinks into it, his eyes blank as he stares at the beaten, broken body stretched out on the white cotton sheets. I linger in the doorway, first taking in all of the machines surrounding the bed. Their beeps spell out a soft little melody, which almost makes me want to laugh. Of course Garen would have music, even now.

Garen himself is still almost completely unrecognizable. Only a few square inches of his skin are still pale white, and the rest is just muddled shades of purple and red. There seem to be bandages on half of his body, and tubes and needles everywhere else. Fuck, it hurts even to look at him. I shut the door behind myself and lean back against it, sinking slowly to the floor until Garen’s body is out of my line of sight.